Chapter 18
After what felt like hours sitting in silence, staring out over the park, lost in the chaos raging inside my head, I finally pushed myself up from the bench only to drop my bag.
Papers and files spilled out, the wind grabbing a few and sending them dancing in front of me like tiny, reckless ballerinas.
I didn’t move.
I just stood there, rooted in place, weighed down by a sadness so hollow it felt bottomless.
“He’s just a dumb guy, Penn. He doesn’t understand who and what he had,” my best friend’s soft voice pulled me from the hypnotic spin of the papers on the wind, a sad symphony with no conductor.
“Just a dumb boy who stole over half of my life though,” I whispered, dropping to my knees to gather the rest. The pages of my notebook flipped open, the wind teasing them until the ink bled across the blue lines, a love story smudged in grief.
A web of lies, a side dish of catfish, and the dangerous allure of a dating app.
It’s all starting to look like a glitch.
The first lie, if you can call it that, was the moment I started writing this story. Page one of a narrative that blurred the lines between confession and revenge. A tale not just about heartbreak, but about the shattering of a soul.
Let me be clear.
This story doesn’t have a happy ending.
It was supposed to.
I was so dead set on winning him back after I found him online.
You see, I’m a sucker for happy endings.
There’s still a romantic in me that refuses to die, even after all these years, even after loving one man with every part of me, only to be left with nothing.
Even after being married to someone who didn’t blink a tear when he walked away, stopping my whole world in one split second.
The losses have been brutal. Wounds that bled out on hardwood floors, I once imagined he’d help clean up. But it was his dagger that brought me to my knees.
The same man who vowed to love me in sickness and in health, for better or worse. He broke those vows. And now, I write about the ways you can kill the person you love, with online lies, with emotional neglect, with silence.
Stay with me as I bury him.
Because the man I loved is gone.
This is an obituary dressed as an article. Set fire with the ashes of my heartbreak, caught in the wind of weeping sorrows. Scheduled to publish on November 29th.
It’s called Love Me with Lies. And it dances dangerously close to the truth.
I had jumped to the ending before I ever told you the beginning. But maybe that’s the mercy in it. Now you know what’s waiting for you at the other side of this story.
I’m giving you a choice, the one I never had. You can walk away now, save yourself from the grief, the sharp ache of betrayal. From the way dating apps masquerade as hope, only to leave you bleeding.
I couldn’t let go of him, not completely. I should have.
But the message box of Pandora let me stay attached to him
to a love made of lies, a fantasy spun in midnight texts and false promises.
I didn’t even notice Dane standing there until Carrie began reading the first page of my article aloud. I thought the words were in my head, reliving themselves, dancing across the page like an inky storm against a pale grey sky.
Dane held out a few of my lost papers. The wind picked up again, flicking the corners as if they had wings. Strands of my black hair blew across my face, and he reached out, hand open, inviting me to rise.
My heart said: Take it. My head screamed: Don’t you dare. That bitch gives bad directions.
He could become something, Penn, the voice inside me whispered as my knees pressed into the cold, wet grass.
A new memory garden, it said. Clover sprigs. Yellow roses. Forget-me-nots in brilliant blue.
“I’m okay,” I bit out, avoiding his eyes.
But he wasn’t wearing his usual Nikes. He wore brown leather dress shoes. Polished. Dark navy linen trousers instead of grey track pants.
He looked like a man stepping out of a different story.
Carrie’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Penn...he’s here. Blake isn’t.” Her voice held weight. “And he’s wearing some fucking nice shoes, I might add.”
I stifled a small laugh. But the ghost of the lips I once called home still haunted me.
Carrie helped me to my feet. My hands trembled as Dane started reading the pages he’d caught. I froze.
Carrie’s arm slipped around my waist, her head resting on my shoulder, her hair brushing my cheek. The wind circled us, like it was trying to hold us all together. To feel the brutal ache stitched inside the scarlet-red ink of a story that once was fiction—until it wasn’t.
My eyes drifted slowly up Dane’s body, to his lips.
The way they moved around my words sparked something deep inside me.
He read with reverence, like the pages had been meant for him.
Then he got to a piece I hadn’t meant for anyone. Not yet. It was pulled from the journal of my current heartbreak. Raw. Undressed.
I feel like he didn’t just carve out my heart…but a piece of my soul as well. I feel empty. So, empty without those pieces. I’m walking around with vital parts of myself missing.
Tears fell from my eyes.
His voice velvety, melancholic breathed something into those words I didn’t know they could hold. Carrie choked on her own tears. Grief wrapped around the three of us like a storm surge.
I had to escape it.
I didn’t want to pull them into this vortex with me.
“Penn... there’s so much heartache in those words. You’re going to have readers bleeding for you.”
I glance sideways at Carrie. Her eyes are glassy, shimmering with unshed tears, her cheeks pink from the Wellington wind and whatever emotion she’s too proud to name. A cracked smile ghosts across my lips, the kind that doesn’t reach the eyes. I nod. There’s nothing left to say.
“If I knew the pain to come, Penn, I would’ve ripped that story from your hands and burned every page.”
“If I knew what love would cost, Carrie, I never would’ve touched him.”
I rip the pages from Dane’s hands, sling my bag over my shoulder, and wipe the tears tracing down my cheeks. Then I walk through the wet grass, through the city, through the mess I made.
My smartwatch vibrates.
“I could be the something inside your new someone…if you let me shoulder the hurt, Penn.” A message from Dane.
Why is he always like this, gentle, soft in a world that shredded me? Why can’t Blake be this man?
I fish my phone from my coat pocket, fingers trembling. I type a Blake on the dating app.
“Have you ever been a lighthouse for a lost lover?”
The reply is instant.
Do you need a lighthouse, baby?”
Baby.
He still calls me that, like time hasn’t cut us into strangers.
We used to make gods of each other. Now I’m just a ghost talking to a man who doesn’t know I’m haunting him.
I reply, “For years, I loved someone I thought I knew…until he turned my world to ash.”
“Tell me how to take that pain away.”
I whisper to myself, Love me again. Tell me it was a mistake. Hold me and say I’m still yours. But I don’t. I keep walking, chasing the orange haze of the dying day like it might warm me from the inside out.
“Who hurt you like this, baby girl?”
I laugh. Hollow. Cruel. “A boy pretending to be a man.”
“I’m a man, baby. And I’d treat you better than he ever did.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“Let me.”
Let him? Fucking let him really….
The irony is, he already knows me. He just doesn’t know who I am now.
“Let’s start at the beginning. What’s your favourite colour?”
Do I keep playing this cruel game? Do I let him fall in love with Pandora—this curated echo of me?
My phone vibrates again.
Dane this time. “Nobody told you heaven could hurt. But I see it in your eyes, you want someone to hold you through the storm. People like us, Penn… we dream too loud. That’s why it hurts so fucking much when those dreams fall apart.”
I close my eyes and let the wind whip my hair across my face; let it slice me open in all the places I pretend are healed.
Some part of me, the part he didn’t touch, wants to believe Dane. The rest is just bone dust and sea salt.
I open my eyes.
And Blake is standing in front of me.
Flowers in one hand. A teddy bear in the other.
And I wish they were for our daughter. But I know they’re for Pandora.
He has no idea.
That I’m her.
That she’s me.
That I’m bleeding out behind this mask.
My eyes sting. I smile, weak and war-torn. He steps closer. My fingers twitch with the urge to reach out.
“Penn… are you okay?”
I swallow hard, clear my throat.
“I’m fine.” A lie I’ve told too well.
“No, you’re not.” His hand grazes my cheek, and the moment his fingers brush my skin, I forget how to breathe. I close my eyes, shamefully selfish in the softness.
“I want to wake up from this nightmare,” I whisper.
“Oh, Penn…” His voice falters. It hurts. I know that sound. It’s regret, confusion, and longing.
Then—
He steps back.
Mouths “I’m so sorry.”
And walks away.
Just like before.
Hours pass.
Carrie calls.
Dane texts.
Blake vanishes again.
Except… not completely. Not to Pandora.
He sends her a photo. The flowers. The bear. My favourite crackers and cheese. Bubbly rosé. A caption:
“After a hard day, this is what I’d do for you. A real man takes care of his girl.”
“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach… maybe that works for women too?”
“So, I have your heart?”
“Not yet. But maybe you’re getting close.”
“What would it take?”
“Turtles and love, sun and sea, books and art, wine tours and rain dances.”
I freeze.
The three lines float for what feels like a lifetime, then vanish into nothingness. I re-read what I sent and curse myself. Too close. Too Penn. Too fucking obvious.
Fuck’s sake, Pandora.